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Updated: June 12, 2025
When Tao-ching arrived in the Central Kingdom, and saw the rules observed by the Sramanas, and the dignified demeanour in their societies which he remarked under all occurring circumstances, he sadly called to mind in what a mutilated and imperfect condition the rules were among the monkish communities in the land of Ts'in, and made the following aspiration: "From this time forth till I come to the state of Buddha, let me not be born in a frontier land."
When he reached his own house he would have closed himself in his own chamber with himself had not Wei Chang persisted that he sought his master's inner ear with a heavy project. This interruption did not please Wong Ts'in, for he had begun to recognize the day as being unlucky, yet Chang succeeded by a device in reaching his side, bearing in his hands a guarded burden.
We call the Asiatic creation, China, Ts'in-a; it may surprise you to know that they called the European attempt by the same name: Ta Ts'in, 'the Great Ts'in. Put the words Augustus Primus Romae into Chinese, and without much straining they might read, Ta Ts'in Shi Hwangti. The whole period of the Chinese manvantara is, from the two-forties B.C. to the twelve-sixties A.D., fifteen centuries.
Not now a King of Ts'in; not a King-Pontiff of Chow; not, if you please, a mere wang or king at all; but Hwangti, like that great figure of mythological times, the Yellow Emperor, who had but to sit on his throne, and all the world was governed and at peace.
But there is a way of throwing a little breathing in, a kind of hiatus: thus Ts'in meant one country, and Tsin another one altogether; and you ought not to mix them, for they were generally at war, and did not mix at all well.
On his way outwards he had encountered an aged man who possessed two fruit-trees, on which he relied for sustenance. As Wong Ts'in drew near, this venerable person carried from his dwelling two beaten cakes of dog-dung and began to bury them about the root of the larger tree. This action, on the part of one who might easily be a disguised wizard, aroused Wong Ts'in's interest.
This, heaven knew, was the day of the Tiger of earthly strength and passions; were there not those three great tigers up north, Ts'in, Tsin, and Ts'i; and as many more southward; and all hungry and strong?
Only by the exercise of an ingenuity greater than its own could Wong Ts'in succeed in baffling its ill-conditioned spite. On this occasion, recognizing from the nature of his pangs what was taking place, Wong Ts'in resorted to a stratagem that rarely failed him.
When they saw their fellow-disciples from Ts'in passing along, they were moved with great pity and sympathy, and expressed themselves thus: "How is it that these men from a border-land should have learned to become monks, and come for the sake of our doctrines from such a distance in search of the Law of Buddha?"
History would go; yes; but a mort of pernicious lies would go with it. But when all is said, China was not unfortunate in having a strong giant of a man, a foreigner withal, at her head during those crucial decades. Ts'in Shi Hwangti guarded China through most of that perilous intermission between the cycles. It was the good that he did that mostly lived after him.
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